As the General Election looms, Allan Tunningley looks back at the political fortunes won and lost in Westmorland and Lonsdale since the constituency was created in 1983

 

WESTMORLAND and Lonsdale as we know it today came into being in 1983, but the county’s pedigree as a parliamentary constituency is more than 700 years old.

The first recorded MPs were Sir Richardus de Prestonne and Sir Williemus de Stirkland, who were returned when the county first became a parliamentary constituency in 1290.

Over the centuries, Westmorland returned many eminent people to the Commons and MPs such as Sir Hugh de Lowther, Thomas de Betham and John de Mansergh join Prestonne and Stirkland in having their surnames echoed in today’s Westmorland place names. These local luminaries were probably elevated rather than elected to Commons, and democracy as we know it today was either non-existent or only vaguely resembled.

Until 1918, the county continued to have two MPs, but between that year and the constituency being abolished in 1983, only one member for Westmorland was returned. For almost a quarter of a century the big beast of county politics was Conservative Michael Jopling, who was first elected to represent the county in 1964. After the 1983 boundary changes, which split the county in two, he became the first MP for the new Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency with a healthy 16,587 majority and a more than 61 per cent share of the vote.

The Liberals, represented by Dr Ken Hulls, came second, polling 27.1 per cent, while Labour’s Chris Stott languished in third with fewer than 10 per cent of the votes.

Four years later, Mr Jopling won with a smaller majority of 14,920 and marginally decreased share of the vote to 57.6 per cent. In the 1992 election, Mr Jopling’s vote peaked at 31,798 and his majority went up to 16,436, but his percentage share of the vote decreased as it had done in the previous election, this time down to 56.9 per cent.

The majority was still healthy, it is true - but this was as good as it would get for the Conservatives in Westmorland and Lonsdale. After Mr Jopling stood down at the 1997 election, Tim Collins was chosen as his replacement - but on polling day he could only muster 21,463 votes, or 42.3 per cent of the vote. In each of the four elections from 1983 to 1997, the Conservatives had seen their ballot share consistently eroded by the Liberal - and subsequently Liberal Democrat - vote, which, with Stan Collins as candidate, had increased from 13,188 votes in 1983 to 16,492 in the 1997 election.

The Liberal Democrats were growing in confidence and, perhaps more importantly, organisational strength as parliamentary success appeared an ever closer possibility.

By the time of the 2001 election, Tim Farron had superseded Stan Collins as Lib Dem candidate and came nearer than ever to toppling the Conservatives in Westmorland and Lonsdale. Mr Collins’s majority was slashed to 3,147 and the writing was on the wall for the Tories. Four years later the constituency was finally wrestled from the Conservative grip. To say the extremely narrow 2005 Lib Dem victory was a surprise for the hardworking and loyal members of the Westmorland and Lonsdale Conservative Association would be an understatement. The shock of defeat shook the organisation to its core. Understandable, perhaps, when you consider Westmorland as a county had consistently returned Tory MPs over so many decades. However, the margin of victory for the Lib Dems was very small - just 267 votes - and was only confirmed after a nail-biting recount.

Conservative Party activists and supporters might reasonably have hoped it was a one-off defeat and that the constituency would be returned to its ‘rightful’ political colour at the next General Election. It was not to be. The 2010 poll not only saw the seat retained by the Lib Dems, they achieved it with a landslide majority. Mr Farron transformed his 267-vote victory into a 12,264-vote trounce. Once again, the Tories were left in shock. They had fielded a creditable and personable candidate in the Northern Ireland-born banker Gareth McKeever, but by 2010 Mr Farron’s momentum had become unstoppable and Westmorland and Lonsdale came from being a marginal to the strongest Lib Dem seat in England.

But what of the Labour vote? How had Britain’s second party of modern times been faring while all this tussling was going on between its two rivals? Well, back in 1945 Labour’s Harold Banning Richardson came second to Tory William Morgan Fletcher-Vane. He polled a creditable 9,119 votes; but that was the year of the Atlee landslide and a war-weary Britain was better disposed to a party that looked more capable of winning the peace. Labour polled a similar amount in 1951, coming second again.

In the post-1983 Westmorland and Lonsdale era, Labour’s best result was 10,452 votes achieved by John Harding in 1997, another Labour landslide year, although that earned him only third place.

Since then the Labour vote has been no higher than 5,234 (John Bateson, 2001) and in 2010 fell to just 1,158 (Jonathan Todd).

Westmorland and Lonsdale does attract other parties, however, and since 1983 voters in the constituency have had a chance to cast their ballots for Ecology (Robert Gibson, 1983, 805 votes), Natural Law (Robert Johnstone,1992, 287 votes), Referendum Party (Michael Smith, 1997, 1,924 votes) and UKIP (Robert Gibson, 2001 and 2005, 292 votes and 309 votes) and John Mander, 2010, 801